The Greatest American Heroes (Believe It Or Not)

The Discovery Channel has announced its list of the 25 greatest Americans. It's a poll, and therefore theoretically represents some slice of public opinion, except it's one of those polls where the voters are limited to 100 "nominees," including such unlikely choices as Jackie Onassis and Donald Trump. So much for the vox pop. (To be fair, if they allowed a completely open election, they probably would have been swamped with votes for Ayn Rand and L. Ron Hubbard.) The victor, for whatever it's worth, was Reagan.

At any rate, while I'm sorry to learn that George W. Bush outpolled Thomas Jefferson, I'm happy to report that Elvis beat FDR.

[Via Anthony Gregory.]

Update: I stand corrected—the original 100 nominees were selected by popular vote as well. I presume it was the Hubbard voters who got Tom Cruise onto the list.